James,
I think you've hit the nail on the head. Some people view camera selection as a religion. They have their camera and their brand. Someone comes up with an opinion that suggests a camera they don't own sometimes shoots better pictures than their brand, and arrows start flying. Another possibility is that the cameras themselves vary from one example to the other. If I was to select a brand which I've always been partial to, it would be Canon - from my old Canon FTb, to Canon Rebels, to IS lenses, etc. I've owned Pentax, Olympus, and Nikon SLR's (35mm) but always prefered Canon.
But the funny thing is that I've owned about eight digital cameras, and the S60 is my first Canon. Others I've owned were the Sony 707, Sony 717, Casio (can't recall model), Nikon 2500, Olympus C50Z, Panasonic FZ-10, Minolta A1, Canon S60 and Sony W1. Also owned the Nikon 5200 for a few days before returning it. The only one I was dissappointed with was the Nikon 5200. All the others have been excellent. The biggest surprise was the Nikon 2500 which took very sharp photos - and even at 2 megapixels it made great 8X10s.
If I just look at the 8X10 prints (rather than 100% blow ups on the screen)the Sony W1 is second to none of these in sharpness and picture quality.
The combination of low noise, suberb colors and excellent sharpness result in first rate pictures. I took a bunch of pictures with the W1 at my daughter's graduation a couple of weeks ago, and the printed 8X10 results looked very professional. Different cameras have different purposes. For instances the Panasonic FZ10 has that very long 420mm zoom with image stabilization - great for wildlife photography. Printed pictures from this camera look magnificent. -- As an example look at the Begonia shot in macros page. The A1 has lots of manual controls and a nice 28 to 200mm lens. Noise is an issue, but in many shots you won't notice it, and in others you can take care of it with post processing software. My current thought is that although the A1 is a good camera, it has enough downside with noise that I'm thinking of selling it and replacing it with a digital SLR which will have considerably less noise, yet have all the manual controls. But I may wait till digital SLRs get a little smaller.
The W1 obviously has a limited lens range, but the camera is very portable. The Canon S60 competes with it a bit in portability, and also competes with the A1 a bit in manual controls.
Bottom line, if you choose the W1 for portability, you won't regret it - the pictures are second to none.
Andre
